Example scenarios where you need reputation management

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Continued from top: To further clarify my definition, let’s use practical scenarios.

Scenario 1 - Oops, I made a mistake

You’re drunk, it’s late and you decide to leave a stupid comment on a blog post. Unfortunately, that post on a very strong site and now shows up for your name. Turns out that you’re looking for a new job and you’re sure that a quick Google enquiry will bring up a moment of idiocy that is sure to diminish your chances of getting hired.

Scenario 2 - That annoying “scam” word

You’re a new start up, and despite all of your kindness, great customer service and big smiles...you now have the word scam associated with your brand. Get mad. Now take deep breaths and stay with me :)

Scenario 3 - The disgruntled customer (aka Trolls)

Seems like your customers genuinely have some complaints, and they decide to vent their frustration on blogs, forums and even make a Youtube video detailing how much they dislike you.

Scenario 4 - The enemy

Someone genuinely dislikes you, knows a bit about SEO and spends 3 hours a day trying to ruin your reputation whilst eating Quavers (Cheetos for North Americans) in their basement yelling at their mom to bring down their laundry because they ran out of fresh pants (NA - underwear) last week due to a Star Trek TV marathon.

There are plenty of other reasons why you’ll need to manage your reputation online, but these are some of the reasons why you’ll need to fight back.

*Keep in mind that I am only dealing with Google in this post, as I haven’t tested any methods for other search engines or social media platforms.

Influencing search suggest

Search suggest: As you type in your query into the Google search bar, you’ll notice that Google will suggest words based on your query.

How do those words get there? / How can I change it?

There are a couple of theories - based on search volume and sheer volume of listings. There are three guys that I absolutely respect and trust 100% on this, and I encourage you to read up on how this works...because I can’t/won’t tell you ;)

Making “scam” happen - Typical culprits

There are people and companies out there who purposely optimize pages for your {brand} + {scam} for a variety of reasons. Usually the mention of your brand + scam in autocomplete (Google suggest) tends to have search volume, but it can also happen because there is indexed content optimized for those keywords. I wish I could explain how this works in depth, but this is a very touchy subject and it’s best left for those who know the law inside out.

Tactics that work - Even after the Panda crashed the party

The biggest mistake that companies make is to put all of their energy into taking down negative listings. You’ve got to think differently, you need to put up more listings to push down the negative listing. Unless the negative listing is worthy of a DMCA takedown. Please note that this isn’t a short process or universally applicable - you’ll need patience and persistence to make this happen.

In many cases you can push up other listings to knock down the negative listing, otherwise you need to get as many listings on that search result page that YOU CONTROL.

How do I know that this works? I’ve done it recently, and struggled with so many different white hat tactics that just didn’t work. Once I found some white hat seo tactics that did work, I felt I needed to share my experiences here.

Exact Match Domains - Individual Reputation Management

The best thing you can do to combat negative listings is buy the exact match domain name for your personal name. Make sure you buy the appropriate tld .

Example: In the UK, buy .co.uk or .org.uk

Does someone own your brand+scam.com/co.uk/net? If not, go buy it and hold on to it so no one else can get it.

Get some good content on that domain and make sure you’re perfectly optimized for it. I’m going to repeat this, you need GOOD content - you need to make sure your pages are perfectly optimized, then you need to get some links. Start off with directory links and see how you get on - if directory links don’t bring you to page 1, you’ll need to either get better links or better content.

Press releases

This is perfect if you’ve got something newsworthy. If you don’t, find an interesting angle and get it out there. I recommend using MarketWire.

Why a press release?

They are powerful, and tend to get picked up by loads of sites that are connected to Press syndication software such as MarketWire. They also allow for anchor text, and can flood a search result if done properly. Sometimes, websites will take the information from your release and not attribute links back to you - if this occurs you should pick up the phone and make sure you get credit.

Actions:

Get a newsworthy angle, find data to support it

Write a professional press release

Submit through service like MarketWire

Get on the phone / send emails to bloggers, journalists etc...

Schema Microdata

If you have no idea what Schema.org is, you need to read up on this now. This is the future of webpage markup that allows you to specifically declare what your page is about beyond html.

Before I get lynched by professional SEOs, I conducted preliminary tests on a few non competitive queries (<1000 local search volume) and I believe that the schema markup was the sole reason for their jump in the ranks.

In one case specifically, I implemented the schema /Person markup for an individual and I jumped 4 positions. No jokes here, get out there and do it on every domain you control - not only because of what I’ve seen, but because it’s just good practice.

If you want me to investigate further and blog about schema microdata influencing rankings, click here to vote ;)

I hate to say this, but directories and press releases can do this easily for you. Just try your very best to submit these to decent directory sites.

Now that we’re in the Panda phase, I have tried article marketing and it just doesn’t work anymore. It was crap before, but now seems to be almost completely devalued. 1 out of every 10 directory links seems to work (try to choose a less populated category), and steer clear from automated submission programs like SEnuke, articledemon.com and xrumer.. A quick work for those who are new into SEO, these products might seem like a godsend promising high rankings blah blah blah....do you really think that Google doesn’t know about this stuff? Using these types of programs will reverse your hard work, you’ve been warned.

Social Media Profiles

Regardless if you’re a business or individual, strong social media profiles can be interlinked and fed low quality links without risk of being penalized (unless you absolutely abuse it - please don’t do that).

I’d never suggest buying crappy links, but if you must or if you have other links you control that are of questionable quality or you think search engines might consider low value or even manipulative, don’t point these to your newly registered domains or the sites you own. Instead, point them at the powerful, high authority social profile pages you’ve created and let the engines decide what/whether to count them.

This works particularly well for nofollow links from comments, wikis and other social participation forms on the web. I’m not sure whether the nofollows directly get counted or if the pages get scraped and re-published in some followed format, but time after time I’ve seen examples of nofollows seemingly doing the heavy lifting to get social profile pages ranking.

If you own some old, neglected sites that are questionable in quality and rankings from the engines’ point of view, you could try testing these by pointing them to other social profile pages (and observing/testing the impact on those URLs’ rankings) before pointing them at your own profiles. Better to be safe than sorry, and there have been plenty of cases where aggressive SEOs have gone too far with linking to social profiles and had either the search engines penalize the pages or even the site administrators pull down the profile, wasting hours or days of work.”

Blog / forum activity

Yes, you should comment on blogs and forums and leave a link in your signature. It works, just please don’t be spammy about it. There are genuine blogs and forums out there that you need to interact with - because they are part of your industry. This way, you can read their content, engage in the community and add backlinks to the listings you need to push up.

Please don’t discriminate against nofollow, as they are necessary as well.

Wikipedia

If you notice that Wikipedia ranks withing the first 3 pages of your negative listing, you’ll need to leverage it’s power. If the article is a stub (incomplete), do some research and fill it out (images, resources, links, text). If the article is well written and complete - build links to it until you see movement.

This principle of building links to strong results (strong domains) to push them up the ladder applies to every SERP. News, Government and University sites are prime candidates for this type of activity....

Tactics in the grey area

Super huge disclaimer

I do not recommend any of the following
Distilled does not recommend any of the following.

The only reason I’m adding this section is to inform you of tactics that others can use against you - you need to understand what the possibilities are in order to fight them. Without further ado: